


A Habit of Truce

by illegible



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Angst, Dry Sex, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Optional post-Stalemate scene, PWP, Porn with Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:06:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25594756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illegible/pseuds/illegible
Summary: Lahabrea, in a moment of weakness, once attempted to use the Warrior of Light as a means to hold himself accountable.The Warrior took him to bed instead.After heading their separate ways, the Ascian finds himself buckling under the weight of his choices.
Relationships: Lahabrea/Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 38





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is not something that _necessarily_ happened, but I had fun writing it! Figure anyone who would like to suppose it went like this can.

They meet again in the Black Shroud, during that brief period following Y’shtola’s rescue from the Lifestream. The air is thick and humid, thrumming with summer and all its fauna. Vilekin chitter steadily between the trees with brief interruptions by beasts of air or earth. Forests under Gridania’s dominion offer little reprieve from a sun which sends heat rippling from every stone. Therefore, the Warrior of Light has forgone his usual armor in favor of a falconer’s shirt, dark without sweltering. It’s quieter without plate and the leather boots are something of a relief. Not since his early days as an adventurer has he wandered thus, never mind in this place. Animals have long since learned to give him a wide berth, greatsword drenched with the blood of those stronger than they.

It’s been some time since he’s been able to travel without fear of pursuit, whether by Crystal Braves or Brass Blades. With Nanamo restored to her seat his name’s been cleared, but an ease he’d once traveled with has been lost. Neither Limsa nor Gridania fought for him, after all… though to be fair they didn’t hunt him down either. 

Still. He’ll not forget where he stands when politics become involved.

A patch of darkness catches the corner of his eye, shrinks as he turns to catch it fully but does not retreat further. Some thirty yalms away, shrouded. Golden spines erupting from either shoulder like wings.

He recognizes the mask immediately, red like a wound with fangs framing lips drawn taut. How could he not? Even outside battle, he’d had an entire night to witness it at close range.

Warrior and Ascian observe one another in silence for several long moments, neither daring to shift from awareness to action.

Then Eorzea’s hero exhales, and leans back on his heels, and says, “Don’t try telling me this meeting is mere happenstance. Have you aught to say, Lahabrea?”

Silence.

Then, from beneath that scowling visage, the Speaker answers, “This was an error on my part.” 

The Warrior tilts his head, questioning, then after a moment sighs. Beckons his foe forward. “I’ll not strike before you do,” he tells him. “Come.”

Another moment passes.

Hesitating, halting, Lahabrea begins to close the gap. “You are being overly charitable,” he says, with only the tilt of his head to indicate how attention shifts in glances. Fingers twitching at his side as if he would close them, but cannot allow himself such expression. “It might have been wiser for me to settle this as we began. Orchestrate an ambush. Use my remaining strength in battle. I know not what I…”

“It’s well you didn’t,” says the Warrior of Light, too easily. “Speak.”

Standing opposite one another now, all but close enough to touch, Lahabrea fixes his gaze on the ground. “I find myself unable to face my colleagues,” he says numbly. “Concentration eludes me. I can only imagine what they might say or do were they aware—even had you been no one of consequence. I am unworthy of such comforts. It only delays what is necessary. Why you granted mercy to me but slew Nabriales, who brought but brief opposition, is past my understanding. I’ve disgraced his loss and my hand in it… I cannot rest. I want to remember even so.“

Nothing.

Then, the Warrior removes his blade. Sets it on the ground. Straightens again to advance further.

“Forgive me if this sounds callous,” he says, not unkindly. “Are you not immortal? Titles aside, I’d hardly expect my bed was novel enough to warrant this.”

A quiet scoff, then, from the Ascian. Tension shifts. Though little can be seen of his face it would prove no surprise if Lahabrea flushed beneath his mask.

“That is beside the point,” he answers. Met with a faint smile, he adds hastily, _“Yes,_ there have been instances when I’ve strayed in the past. I endeavor to keep them to a minimum… odd exchanges between millenia for moments when I— no. Nothing of this nature. Not tied to the Ardor, not with those aware of me in any detail.”

”Have a mind,” says the Warrior, moving closer still as his adversary retreats on reflex. “I’d not encourage rejoinings over what I tell you now. That being said… from all you’ve shared, I can’t say I believe you’re unworthy. Denying yourself peace solves nothing, and given the choice I’d rather you didn’t suffer.” 

A shake of the head in response. 

Another step. 

“No. No, there is more I can yet—“ 

“Look,” he says firmly. Lahabrea’s back collides with a tree, stopping his progress. “You and Nabriales placed friends of mine in danger. Maybe I knew less, then, about your situation than I do now. Doesn’t mean I’ll stop protecting those you’d harm. Still matters that your cause stems from grief rather than ambition. Truly.” A pause, then. Lahabrea’s lips are slightly parted, his face tilted just-up to meet his foe’s. The Warrior frames him with an arm, leaning against the trunk. “…Why did you come to me this time, Speaker?” 

His mouth shuts. 

Opens again. 

Eventually sound emerges. 

“I don’t know,” says the Ascian hoarsely. “I don’t know. It was a poor choice. A mistake. I don’t know. Yet another way I’ve betrayed the trust placed in me. Another… another way I’ve fallen short. The situation has become unbearable. Good or ill it cannot stand. _I cannot stand it._ ”

This is when Hydaelyn’s champion stills Lahabrea’s tongue with a kiss. As before the slighter man stiffens—though he does, after very little coaxing, let his opponent inside. Skin and mask bump awkwardly, immortal hands hovering as though unsure whether seeking more would ask too much. 

“Easy,” murmurs the Warrior during a gap between them, sealing it again to interrupt an inhale. Blonde hair lies hidden beneath his hood, office overwhelming the individual who holds it. Another kiss, and he snags those wrists wavering in place to pin them overhead with a single grip. 

“Any good?” asks the Warrior of Light, pressed to the shadowed crook of a paragon’s neck. 

A shudder. After a breathless moment he inclines his head. 

“I… I would forget again for now,” Lahabrea whispers. “Help me.” 

What can a hero do but answer? 

The Warrior nests his knee between Lahabrea’s thighs, uses his free hand to drag low the collar obscuring his throat. Rides up and up finding groin rocking in place while teeth clench tight around Adam’s apple press close at the whimper beneath to silence it. Suck hard, unrelenting, as if that will let him taste the voice he strangles the breath hitching sharp hips spasming to find more friction against the limb beneath them. Clawed hands contract stuttering empty in increments as the Warrior grinds higher shifts lips and jaws to take each unmarked space. 

He withdraws only as Lahabrea’s knees begin to buckle, length hardening against him. In his wake are a collection of bruises, dark tucked behind dark fabric once more.

What can be spied of the Ascian’s skin is red, sticky with humidity. Brushing his capelet aside the Warrior latches to Lahabrea’s collarbone. There is a thin, strained noise as the tunic soaks and heats with attention, target jerking against the continued pressure at his erection. This grows more erratic as the Warrior finds his shoulder instead—noting with satisfaction how Lahabrea twists for greater contact.

“Hope you enjoyed the ones I left last time,” he murmurs, freeing a captive wrist to pull it forward. “At least a little.”

The Ascian forces his mouth shut, nods almost limply. The Warrior quirks his lips and extends two of Lahabrea’s fingers to draw them talon-first between his lips. He glides past metal to glove, guides the digits carefully to drag teeth across leather. The Speaker’s legs close and there is a rough, urgent gasp as the barrier between them grows heavy with spit. A twitch, not enough to impede progress but the hero bites gently even so.

“Don’t… don’t _torment_ me,” says Lahabrea, voice breaking. “I…”

A pause.

Slowly, meticulously, the Warrior begins to withdraw past joints only to clench around steel. He drags it with him, and bit by bit the garment pulls free.

Only bare flesh left behind.

The Warrior of Light finds Lahabrea’s palm and kisses him there, uses the moan it prompts as incentive to trace his tongue from veins to lifelines to the neglected spaces between each finger. He fixes his gaze on tears rolling freely below lacquer (the mask could not look more out of place), liberates his remaining hand to slide under the Ascian’s hem exploring ribs, stomach, sternum. Sparks a convulsion, a sob, a desperate fumble at his shoulder as if that could somehow keep his head above water. This is not the first person Hydaelyn’s favorite has rescued and he pauses to find Lahabrea’s mouth again, worries his nipple with the tip of a nail until he arches until Zodiark’s priest bites his lip in turn until there can be no mistaking the strain in his pants or the need it declares. 

He meant the kiss to offer something softer, something reassuring. Instead there is _agony_ in Lahabrea’s voice as he swallows it, like the last plea of a drowning man.

It feels deceptively easy to release him again, to press more well-intended kisses along the exposed skin of his forearm. When he eases his knee away to kneel it nearly ends in collapse, and the Warrior has to brace his foe until the immortal finds strength enough to do it alone.

“Not just yet,” he says quietly, nipping Lahabrea’s abdomen through his robes. A smile at the yelp this earns. “I’ve got you.” 

When the Ascian spreads his legs it is as much in request as a means to stay upright. His breath already comes harsh, uneven, hitching as teeth close this time on his inner thigh. A shout wets the Warrior’s tongue to press hard and slick against cloth that offers no protection. A flinch only drives him harder, thumb digging into Lahabrea’s opposite side firm enough to spark a buck without providing relief. There nowhere to escape to, Ascian pinned to this moment surely as if by auracite. He struggles for more pressure, more touch, left wanting as his voice is dragged out devoid of poetry. 

Fingers tangle through the Warrior’s hair, painfully tight and pulling closer. He complies in his own time, lingering with each concession to claim his prey. Lahabrea cries out with growing frequency, growing volume, wavering even as his hands shake his lungs empty time to recover snatched away in a quickening rhythm. 

This is when the savior of Eorzea takes him (separated only by fabric) into his mouth. Caresses the shape of him, drenches his length, sucks with enough force that for a moment he might convince Lahabrea they touch directly. 

He knows the Ascian comes in how his body spasms uncontrollably, moment after moment. How liquid warmth bleeds to meet him. Salt he can seek but barely swallow.

It is a surprisingly quiet event, Speaker’s voice broken into a collection of gasps. Soft as a punctured lung. When his knees buckle, grip loose as he starts sliding sideways, the Warrior catches him. Eases his adversary to the ground, head and shoulder blades propped against the trunk once more.

A name is whispered between them like an echo. The hero presses one kiss to Lahabrea’s upper lip where it trembles, another to the bottom. Captures both hands, gloved and exposed together, to trap them once more above his hood. Disheveled, now. Leaning forehead to forehead against a mask made for but one expression, the Warrior allows just a moment or so before murmuring, “Leg up for me, would you?”

It takes a some time before the words seem to register. A bit more as Lahabrea struggles to regain control of his body—sluggish, halting. Meeting compliance, the Warrior exhales shakily and begins to grind his own arousal against the proffered limb.

For a heartbeat, it seems as if the Ascian means to reach for him. Pauses. Relaxes once more against his constraints. Begins to look away only to find himself ensnared further yet by his opponent.

 _“Yours,”_ grunts the Warrior against his mouth. Kisses him twice at the wet trails along his jaw, returns to earn a muffled moan. A shiver. “I want this. Want you to have this.”

A noise, sharp and shattered, escapes Lahabrea as he tears his hands free—scrabbling desperately against the Warrior’s back before his fingers find purchase. Hold fast. Nearly painful.

He remains like that as the dark knight seeks and eventually snares his own release. He remains like that in the panting stillness that comes after, too.

A laugh, eventually, from the liberator of nations. It comes softly, as if in surprise as much at himself as the Ascian. 

Through its wake he brings an arm up to hold Lahabrea in return.


	2. Chapter 2

“We aren’t doing very well in this fight-to-the-death situation, are we?”

A different sort of laugh. Muffled and wavering, but true.

Separating, he cannot bring himself even to protest as the Warrior gently tugs his mask askew. Smiles.

“There’s a spot nearby we can use to wash off,” says the mortal, the fragment that will blink out sooner rather than later. He kisses Lahabrea’s exposed cheek, wobbles a little himself as he gets up.

Extends a hand.

Lahabrea stares for a beat, and his shoulders fall, and his own smile hurts somewhere deep behind his ribs.

He still means it when he accepts.

***

They reach a pond, secluded and clear where light filters between branches. Lahabrea remembers when this place was new, when it was not yet a flicker of potential, but he doesn’t say so. 

Right now it is quiet, and calm, and _here_.

Fleeting, yes. Certainly not enough to keep him afloat for long. But if he is to sink he would take every moment like this he can.

***

Their clothes lay spread across a rock. Rinsed, set out to dry. His mask rests at the end in a manner that could almost be mistaken for casual. There is a cliff rising at the pool’s edge, and this time the Warrior allows himself nature’s support. Lahabrea had originally kept his distance, but being subject to such amused scrutiny discovered he had not the will to refuse the invitation that followed.

He catches himself resting, not uncomfortably, beneath the Warrior’s arm. Head perched under his chin, held fast. Submerged waist-down in water where they sit side-by-side.

They are both of them diminished in their own ways. The Speaker knows this, has never been blind to the way he cuts pieces from himself over the years. He knows well how small he has become against what he was. There is no protection to be found beside this sundered Ascian-slayer. 

He finds himself reassured anyway.

“Stumbled onto this place when I was still a rookie,” says the Warrior of Light, eyes glinting with mischief. “Not a lot of people come here, but can you imagine if someone did?”

Lahabrea snorts, lips quirking at the edges, and finds that he can.

***

The Warrior traces his handiwork idly, with callused fingertips. For his part, the Ascian does his best to remain still under such attentions. Bruises lining his groin summon a flush against the thumb rolling back and forth across them. Pressure, warmth. A pulse getting the better of him.

It isn’t about a repeat performance. The sensation is almost alien for being gentle.

“Are you truly so alone?” asks the hyur quietly, his tone serious despite the continued teasing. “Even with the others?”

Breath catches halfway up his throat, blocking any reflexive answer he could give. Lahabrea squirms, struggles for a reply that will afford proper weight.

All he can offer, in the end, is a question of his own.

“Are you?”

It comes out hoarse, clumsy. 

Distracted. 

The Warrior smiles in a reflex, and though it isn’t a happy expression he trails up and down Lahabrea’s cock regardless. This prompts an exhale, no steadier for being relaxed.

“I don’t want you to suffer,” admits the hero. “Truly. Doubtless there are schemes of yours in motion that I cannot allow anymore than you would ignore mine… but even so.”

A sharp, bitter laugh at that. “P-Pretty sentiment,” says Lahabrea, baring his teeth as he tilts his head back. More exposed bruising, the gesture pressing his waist closer still. A careful breath allows him to continue—if wearily. “There is no other road I can walk, Warrior of Light. I cannot cease, cannot… cannot rest. Not in truth.”

A moment passes. The dark knight continues his attentions carefully, with a light touch.

Lahabrea shudders. 

Begins to rise so he might match his gaze.

 _“Do not misunderstand m_ e,” he says, shrill. “I- I cannot permit myself to fall. Such a defeat would be catastrophic. So, for all this confidence I—“

The Warrior raises his hand in a bid for silence. 

“Aye,” he says, “peace. I understand. I won’t underestimate you. And I expect the same goes for me.”

For a time there is no sound but the lapping of water. The trill of birds and insects. Wind on leaves.

Eventually, Lahabrea nods. Allows tension to leech from his back to recline once more against his foe.

The hand returns. Strays higher. Passes a patch of hair to seek his navel, to rub small circles just below. Prompts an involuntary twitch in the Ascian’s legs as his lungs empty.

Lahabrea hears his name. 

Then, “Can there truly be no different outcome?”

He shuts his eyes.

“No,” answers the Speaker. “We have searched eons beyond reckoning, checking and re-checking our course.” 

A beat.

“In truth, I can no longer see the end to this path,” he murmurs. “I cannot… I must remind myself this will make a difference eventually. Even if such things now lie beyond what I can conceive.”

Lips, warm and clean, press to his scalp. Linger there.

“What do you hope to achieve in the Ardor?” asks the Warrior of Light. “Not literally, but… you know. Personally.”

Lahabrea’s shoulders drop.

“Forgiveness,” he replies at length. “To know I haven’t failed the final task set before me. To see those entrusted to my care safe again.”

A softer expression in response. The arm encircling him tightens.

They sit like that for a long time.

Then, the Warrior says, “If there is a way to reconcile, I will find it. Truly.”

Nearly a whisper, steeled though it is.

Hope is not what lifts the edges of Lahabrea’s mouth. What steals a sigh from his chest.

He takes the mortal’s hand in his own.

For now, it will suffice.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the bookclub discord for encouraging me with this! It's a wonderful group for FFXIV fanfiction readers and writers that I'd highly recommend. You can find it [here](https://discord.gg/8WnWdr) if interested!


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